Imagine You're Eating More And You'll Eat Less

Through the science of visualisation, you may actually be able to curb your appetite. New research suggests that imagining yourself eating more will help you eat less when you have to do it for real.

Diets commonly recommend that you suppress your thoughts about food, but new research suggests that's actually counterintuitive. Science Now reports that researchers have always known that the habituation effect, or how eating the same thing over and over decreases your desire for it, was present when actually eating. What they've recently found is that you can create the same effect with your imagination.

The trick is to imagine eating a lot of the food you're about to eat, because if you imagine eating too many mashed potatoes it isn't going to make you tired of eating chocolate cupcakes. So take a minute, close your eyes, and start thinking about swallowing seven steak dinners. Now go and try to eat one and let us know if it kept your appetite in check.